Posted on 05/31/2007 12:11:35 AM PDT by The_Eaglet
Dr. Ron Paul has become an internet sensation, according to his website www.RonPaul2008.com. The Ron Paul 2008 site states that he is the most requested Republican candidate on Eventful.com, a site which allows users to request that a person (usually an entertainer) visit their area. In addition, the Ron Paul 2008 site reports that Dr. Paul has twice as many You Tube subscribers as all of the other Republican candidates combined.
(Excerpt) Read more at associatedcontent.com ...
I’m a Ron Paul supporter, but I don’t think he’s going to be the next president. His value lies in forcing the debate about ideas (what little of it there is) to the true conservative side. When you have three left wing liberal stooges like Guiliani, McCain and Romney running agains two left wing liberal marxists like Clinton and Osama bin Obama, then conservatives are totally shut out. Something that a lot of the posters on this supposedly conservative forum seem to lose sight of in their rabid shout down the opposition support of the short man in search of a balcony.
Not only is your comment a lie, it is also a stupid lie and, even further, an insultingly stupid lie.
This kind of talk is not only unproductive - it is intentionally destructive of rational discourse.
I wish Ron Paul supporters would be consistent - they claim that the so-called "Neocon's War" is a tremendous waste of money, and then they simultaneously claim that the so-called "Neocon's War" was a deliberate conspiracy to make money.
The paranoiac is rarely a consistent individual, but this sort of discourse is Orwellian doublethink.
I did. Thanks for linking it here.
You are either being deliberately obtuse or you don't understand how there isn't any inconsistency in the statement. It can be a "tremendous waste of money" for the taxpayers and yet make money for the defense contractors who get the taxpayers' loot. I wouldn't call it a "conspiracy " though. That's just how everything works in Washington - a tremendous waste of money for the many and a get rich benefit to the few.
You mean the Great Ron Paul Ding Bat List?? My computer has anti-aslyum protection, but I must still respectfully decline...
No, not at all.
“Ron Who?”
The soon-to-be-ex-Representative from the TX-14 Congressional district.
Let's look at it.
The underlying assumptions of your post are:
(1) There is a relatively homogeneous crew of powerful men known as "neocons" and they are generally quite wealthy and influential both in politics and business.
(2) They have a vested interest in boosting the profits of defense contracting companies, and therefore want to transfer large amounts of taxes from the general coffers to the balance sheets of large defense contractors.
Now let's shift to reality:
Defense contracting represents less than 4% of US GDP.
Of that spending roughly 75% is baseline, and the Iraq and Afghanistan interventions represent 25% - or 1% of GDP. Much of that 1% is not spent on defense contractors, but on the enhanced pay for combat troops in the line of fire, survivors' benefits, increased healthcare costs, etc.
Corporations pay more in taxes every quarter than the Iraq and Afghanistan interventions cost per year and individuals in the top 10% of earners (i.e. the wealthiest Americans of whom the putative "neocons" are members) pay twice as much in taxes each month as the Iraq and Afghanistan interventions cost per year.
Netting out the defense contracts from costs that do not go to defense contractors, these numbers more than double on the taxation side.
If these "neocons" were truly crafty they wouldn't have all their eggs in the single financial basket of defense contractors, but would have a diversified financial portfolio that would be best served by peacefully reducing taxes without the enormous loss of life and expenditure of taxes associated with interventions.
Even if they were somehow simultaneously intelligent enough to "lie the country into war" and yet stupid enough not to diversify, simple math reveals that by slightly reducing corporate taxes on defense contractors' revenues from peacetime baseline business, they would profit many times more than they would from an intervention. Coupled with taxcuts on income, they would do even better.
In fact, if they had put everything into SDI instead - which is pure revenue to contractors, unlike intervention - they would have cleaned up.
No, the reason why we intervened is because the war was brought to our shores by maniacs - not because an imaginary cabal of manipulators decided to do so for profit.
What does that say about us? Nevermind.....
I think Tancredo did, once, but your point is still valid.
I think “pseudoconservative” would be a more accurate description than “neocon”. There are too many Gentile pseudoconservative Republicans.
Not true. I don't believe that I even mentioned "neocons"
(2) They have a vested interest in boosting the profits of defense contracting companies, and therefore want to transfer large amounts of taxes from the general coffers to the balance sheets of large defense contractors.
Nope you don't have a clue as to what I meant. The "war money" is spend on something. The dollars aren't just buried in the sand. The salaries of the troops accounts for some of it, but they'd get paid anyway, so where does the money go? It goes to the government contractors and defense industries as well as a host of other government "service providers" most of whom are based in the USA, so some people get rich. SOme people get killed, and all of the rest of us foot the bill via our taxes.
pay twice as much in taxes each month as the Iraq and Afghanistan interventions cost per year
Even granting the accuracy of this statement, So what? It doesn't change the fact that tax dollars are being spent on a war that the USA won years ago. Saddam H. is gone - dead and buried or whatever they did with him. You have some sort of hangup on "neocons" and "conspiracy" I believe that my statement that this was NOT a conspiracy, but business as usual in lala land inside the beltway. The taxpayers get the shaft and some special interest group gets the dollars whether or not it's corporate welfare, buying votes with individual welfare, wasting money on moon rockets, it all comes down to the same thing. Kongress and EL Presidente are taking our money and spending it with their friends - the same way it's been done for decades. Hence there is no contradiction in the "wasting money" and "getting rich" It's what government does.
No, the reason why we intervened is because the war was brought to our shores by maniacs - not because an imaginary cabal of manipulators decided to do so for profit.
Again so what? This has nothing to do with what I said. But while we're on the topic there are about a dozen or more American killed every day by illegal immigrants 365 days a year. El Presidente and his Kongress are quick to delcare "war on terror" as if you could war on a concept, but don't seem interested in protecting the lives of Americans from this much more serious threat (do the math). WHere is the "war on illegal immigration?"
Agreed. Where Bush, Rudy et al tried to haul the GOP Leftward, folks like Hunter and Paul grab ‘em by the ears and bring back to the Right.
Put down the crack pipe and go get some fresh air... Stop pretending to be a conservative while you are at it...
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